Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
This project aims to investigate how past management practices influence the behavior of wildfires and subsequent effects to rangeland. Understanding this relationship is crucial for improving future fire management strategies and mitigating the impacts of wildfires on landscapes and communities. The overarching goal of this research is to determine how factors such as mowing, grazing, prescribed burns, and land use history affect fire behavior and ecosystem resilience. Specific objectives include analyzing data from the 2024 Panhandle Wildfires to identify patterns related to past management practices, conducting field experiments to test hypotheses about the relationship between management and fire behavior, and developing models to predict future fire impacts based on management scenarios. Expected results include new insights into the complex interactions between management practices and wildfire behavior, leading to improved strategies for mitigating fire risk and enhancing ecosystem resilience. The anticipated impact of this work is significant, as it will inform land managers and policymakers about the most effective approaches for reducing wildfire risk and promoting rangeland health and resiliency. By filling critical gaps in our understanding of wildfire ecology, this research will guide future management decisions and ultimately help protect lives, property, and natural resources from wildfires.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
There is a need to assess the role of prescribed fire, grazing, and mowing in the mitigation of future wildfires. We need to evaluate how fuel reduction activities can mitigate the occurrence, extent, and intensity of wildfires but also build agroecosystem resilience at the landscape level by rapidly deploying new technologies with rangeland processes.Our objectives are (1) to evaluate burn severity across the 2024 Texas Panhandle Wildfires with a focus on prescribed burned areas, non-prescribed burn areas, burn-out operations during the wildfire, mowed, grazed, and wildfire impacted areas (2) Understand the temporal and spatial role of fuel reduction practices on burn severity, and (3) Communicate and discuss our findings to landowners via white papers, trainings, communication strategies of climate-smart practices and solution-driven response that can be rapidly adopted by various end-users including Volunteer Fire Departments, Contractors, Texas A&M Forest Service, and County Extension Agents in wildfire mitigation practices from our rangeland toolkit.Our driving hypothesis is that rangeland professional tools such as mowing, grazing, and prescribed burning will reduce the intensity and extent of wildfires and provide more resilient agroecosystems and communities to catastrophic events.
Project Methods
We plan to achieve Objectives 1 and 2 using a combination of remote sensing platforms and temporal analysis to evaluate the distribution of prescribed fire, mowing, and grazing before the Smokehouse fire. We will use sentinel imagery (10-m resolution, 13 bands, weekly) and Planet Imagery (3-m resolution, 8 bands, daily) to assess the spatial distribution of burn severity in prescribed burn, mowed, and grazed areas and non-treated areas. We will monitor areas within the Smokehouse Creek, Windy Deuce, Grape Vine Creek, and Magenta wildfires to evaluate vegetation changes due to the fire in prescribed burn, burn-out, mowed, grazed, and non-prescribed burn areas. We will use the Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) for Sentinel and the burned area index (BAI) for planet to meet their spectral requirements. These indices are designed to highlight burnt areas in large fire zones. We will use pre fire and post-fire areas to select locations and collect vegetation cover samples once every two months to evaluate pasture recovery. This will be complemented with image classifications and landscape level analyses of vegetation regrowth within the Smokehouse Fire. We will acquire imagery for the study area on a monthly basis and classify land cover to look at the changes and recovery of burned areas. Classifications will be verified with fieldwork data collection (Land cover data) and drone imagery. We plan to acquire imagery using a RGB and a multispectral camera with a pixel resolution of 1.5 - 5 cm. Our drones (Trinity Pro and Alta-X) are NDAA compliant and meet cybersecurity requirements. The combination of spatial and temporal analysis will provide novel insights into vegetation dynamics post-fire. It will also provide the comparative analysis of areas managed with mowing, grazing, and prescribed fire, and areas that were not subject to any of these management practices. The results of these analyses will inform objective 3.We plan to achieve Objective 3 by working closely with County Extension Agents to deliver the results of Objectives 1 and 2 in local and regional workshops in Canadian, Borger, and Pampa. We also have a concurrent session during the Great Plains Fire Summit (August 13-15 Canyon, TX) to discuss 2024 Panhandle Wildfires with landowners, stakeholders, and agency representatives. Presenting the findings of our analysesto producers will emphasize target areas of recovery efforts, illuminate areas of grassland resiliency to fire, and showcase direct effects of wildfire mitigation with prescribed fire. We also will deliver a series of factsheets showcasing results from Objectives 1 & 2, but also empowering and equipping landowners with forming Prescribed Burn Associations and developing Wildfire Preparedness Plans for communities through Disaster Assessment and Recovery Extension Agents, County Extension Agents, and Emergency Management Coordinators. Retrospective surveys regarding prescribed burning, mowing, and grazing on wildfire effects knowledge gained and intention to adopt our results generated from rangeland professional toolkit practices will be measured from our participating County Agents, landowners, and officials. This information will be powerful for communities in development of their wildfire preparedness plans and equally powerful for regional County Agents knowledge and preparedness in dealing with future extreme climatic events such as drought or uneven precipitation distribution that compound wildfire effects.